Reinforcements

Since last I posted, Laura painted up three more ships for my fleet. I have the last ship currently available for the Dindrenzi, the Carrier, all set and ready to go. Though to be honest, I don't know how often it will see the field. I'm not a big fan of the ship in my fleet. Having forward fixed guns and only being able to turn 45 degrees a turn makes for a pretty crappy ship. Unfortunately, currently it's the only way I can field wings that can't be tapped by Bingo Fuel. A shame, that.



The other two ships were the fuel carrier and one of the luxury liners. I wanted a green and copper feel for the fuel carrier, and I think it came out pretty well. It ended up being hard to see because of the dark green I wanted, but not too shabby. The second one, the luxury liner, turned out better than I thought it would. Originally I wanted a red, white and blue color. Having all of my Dindrenzi ships be "standard metal" color, I wanted the civilian ships to be a bit more colorful. After a few attempts, Laura came up with an awesome scheme of the red fins and then having the main body blend from white to blue the whole way. Pretty slick!

Easter Sunday

It's a beautiful day. Happy Easter to all!

A Better 4th Edition

My feelings on 4E aren't really hidden. I don't like it as much as 3.x. Which is a shame, since 4E sounded like such a good idea at the time.

But this isn't a post about Dungeons and Dragons or anything, so I should stop talking about them. This is a post about a better 4th Edition that's coming out soon. Legend of the Five Rings 4E. Adam was kind enough to send me this link to a bunch of creator diaries about the game. The most recent one's at the top and the others are further down the chain.

They're a little lengthy - I've only read the first one so far - but it sounds pretty good. My biggest concern with their third edition was that it made things far more complicated than they needed to be. First edition was simple and straight forward (most people complained about the magic system being odd, but I didn't mind it so much). Second edition was a trash heap and third actually started cleaning it up a bit, but there were so many things to remember. For example, defense was no longer Reflexes times five plus armor. Now it was Reflexes times five plus armor plus this chart based on your attack value if you're using a sword of a particular style plus this bonus from terrain minus your opponent's skill in a particular weapon plus and minus any schools either of you might have. Times three quarters. Probably not quite that complicated, but it felt that way.

I think my biggest downer about the new edition will be that it's taking place in the current timeline. For my money, there's nothing better than the original pre-Scorpion Clan Coup timeline. There wasn't the 50 years of absolute turmoil and chaos where everything that the clans did went contrary to the previous 1000 years. The card game's good as a card game, but it shouldn't impact the storyline. It really screws things up.

Would I switch to 4th when it comes out? Perhaps. It's got a tough hill to climb to replace 1st edition, but it could do it. Either way, I'm excited to see what happens.

Now if only I could hear what's going on with Iron Kingdoms too...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I Give You William Shatner

I'm not certain if I can give this the proper introduction. It's William Shatner being interviewed by GQ, and that's about all there might be to say.

And in case you're curious, yes, he does in fact request that the interviewer kiss his horse, Mr. Tambourine Man. It's a long read, but filled with hidden gems.

I Had a Dream Last Night

It's been disappointing, really. For a long time, I had crazy dreams all the time. Serious Mike battling a crocodile, myself being Batman's sidekick, and the Pope performing Mass for the US Senate on a beach in New Jersey. But of late, I haven't had many great dreams. Or if I had, I haven't remembered them.

Last night I finally had a good dream again. It started with myself and Laura going on a vacation trip with my college buddies. I don't know exactly where we went, but it was going to be a week-long trip again in which we were all going to take dancing lessons.

Well, when we arrived at the vacation spot, we all headed to the grocery store. This was one of those smaller mom & pop ones that you find in small towns. Somehow, I got in my hands a twinkie. But throughout the entire dream, nobody ever referred to it as such. It was always a "tasty spongecake."

So I was running around the grocery store with my tasty spongecake when one of the employees stopped me. He was angry. Evidently if I could not respect a tasty spongecake (which running around with it seemed to prove I could not), I could not join my friends in the dance lessons.

For the entire week, I sat around in the house we had rented, moping around, while everyone else went to the awesomely-fun dance lessons (or so I gathered from their conversations when they got home). They even rented a limousine when they went to one of the lessons!

I was very depressed about the whole thing, so much so that in my best Anakin Skywalker voice, I cornered Adam at one point and said to him, "This is the worst vacation EEEEVER!"

Then I woke up.

I don't even like twinkies.

Oh So Pretty

Not exactly new news, but I like the look of the new Heavy Cruisers from Firestorm Armada (Spartan Games) that I just had to post them up here. My work computer doesn't allow me to head over to the website to see them, so sometimes when I want to gaze longingly at the new ships that will be coming out, I just can't. And it's a sad situation for me. This way, I can gaze whenever I like.

Anywho, I'm really looking forward to the new ships. From what I understand from the threads, the going theory is that these things will be able to be mixed in with regular Cruiser squadrons (or could be fielded on their own as a full Heavy Cruiser squadron). They're better than their counterparts, but for a fair price more as well. Looking forward to seeing the rules. Word from Spartan Games was they'd have the rules out by the end of March, but here we are in April with nothing to show for it. From my understanding, that's not uncommon with this company, which is a shame.

I Dislike the US Post Office

I don't tend to get a lot of mail. Usually I check my mailbox once a week. A week and a half ago, Laura and I were sent an oversized catalog that filled up our mailbox, and the post office immediately put a hold on our mail until we went to pick it up. So the day after we found out, Laura and I went to the post office and picked up our mail. I went back to the mailbox to pick up last week's mail, and it turns out there mail is still on hold. So I called the post office 1-800 number and spent about five minutes trying to navigate their menu of options. I ended up with the phone trying to get me to deliver a package, which was clearly not my intention. I tried to get back to the main menu, and it hung up on me. So I called back and tried some different options. A couple of minutes later, I was talking to a real person. I told him the situation and he told me I had to talk to the post office. I asked him who I was talking to and he said I had to talk to a different post office. He got me the phone number for my post office and I called them. By this point, it was 5:55. The post office closed at 6:00, according to the website. Nobody answered. They said they closed at 5:30

So now I'm stuck without getting mail still, and I need to get over to the post office (which, strangely, is the one ten minutes from my house rather than the one two minutes from my house) sometime during the work day in order to stand back in line and tell them again to take the hold off my mail box. Very frustrating...